7 o'clock came and I managed to get into the shower and get ready for our arrival in Berlin. I had to scramble through my notes and figure out which station I needed out of the four that our train passed through. Ostbanhof it was, and a further connection to Lichtenberg brings me to this little internet cafe in a district of berlin. I'm just about to get on the "Moscow Express" which for me is when the adventure really starts. It will pass through Germany and Poland today, and then Belarus and Russia tomorrow, arriving in Moscow around 8pm.

I got on my train (the Moscow Express) in Berlin not sure which carriage to enter because my ticket was a little on the "foreign" side. I found my three-berth cabin, with a guy already inside and unpacking his stuff. After some introductions I learned that he was also going from Moscow to Beijing, like me, on the following tuesday

. His name was Yoshi and he is a Japanese student returning home from studies in Berlin. As the train pulled out of Berlin I settled down to my books and ipod. Before long we were stopping at Polish cities like Warsaw and Poznan, I met a Pole called Karel who was very talkative and excited to be on his way to Moscow for a holiday.

At around 10pm Yoshi and I instructed our carriage guard to turn our cabin-seats into cabin-beds and settled down for the night. At around 1am we were woken by banging on the door and two Belorussian guards were outside wanting to see our passports and visas. We guessed we were at the Poland-Belarus border and were asked to fill out customs forms. I'd always filled out customs forms at airports or in planes, never sat in my pants and t-shirt having just woken up! The train took forever to leave the station and finally we got some kip.